For fans of the Phillies and Yankees, this is an exciting week. For fans of the game in general, this could be a lot of fun. But for a pretty significant group of fans, they really only care about their team, and anything that does not involve their team isn’t particularly interesting. For those people, the playoffs can’t end soon enough, so that their team can go about making trades and free agent signings and the like. Right now, they’ve got nothing.

So, I have a proposal. Since Fox wants to drag out the playoffs with interminable off-days that serve no purpose to the fans, let’s create something for the fans of the other 28 teams to enjoy during the end of October. And what do fans enjoy more than hot stove roster mongering? Thinking up ways to get rid of the one guy on the roster they hate more than anyone else.

The solution is obvious – the 28 teams that don’t qualify for the World Series send their General Manager to a large conference room, not unlike what the NFL uses for the draft. Each GM brings one contract, places it in a pile, and prepares for Bad Contract White Elephant.

You’ve all participated in some kind of White Elephant Christmas exchange, I’d imagine. This would be just like that, only the “gifts” would be albatross contracts. Alex Anthropolous would bring Vernon Wells‘ commitment. Brian Sabean would bring Barry Zito’s deal. Jim Hendry would show up with the Alfonso Soriano contract. You get the idea.

Can you imagine how much fun it would be watching Billy Beane reach into a stack of contracts praying to come away with one of the more innocuous deals (Pat Burrell?), only to end up pulling a budget buster like Todd Helton, and then spending the next several hours trying to convince Josh Byrnes to steal Helton in order to not risk getting stuck with Wells, Soriano, or Zito?

Watching the strategy play out would be amazing. Does Dave Dombrowski dump the $10 million he owes Dontrelle Willis that will return him no value or the $18 million he owes Magglio Ordonez that will return him some value? If you have the opportunity to swap Jose Guillen for Carlos Lee, do you take on the extra money in order to get a player who can actually help your team, or do you reach into the stack and hope to come away with something better than either? What GM actually puts a good player in the pot just because he’s not particularly good at judging player value? (Okay, this would probably be Dayton Moore).

Seriously, who wouldn’t watch this? Bad Contract White Elephant would be a ratings bonanza. They could even set it up where all the ad revenue generated through the television rights would be applied directly to the bad contracts themselves, giving baseball a way to get revenue from guys who are generally despised by their fan base.

Make it happen, Bud – this could be the single greatest innovation of your reign as commissioner.

It’s finally here. Baseball takes the stage with two worthy contenders for the title, as the defending champs match up with the best team in baseball. The Phillies and Yankees both deserve to be here, and hopefully, we’ll get our first really good series of the playoffs.

That said, there’s an ugly possibility lurking for those hoping for a seven game, knock-down, drag-out fight to the finish – this Yankees team is capable of making this a very quick knockout.

The Phillies are a good offensive team, with some terrific hitters and a deep lineup. But the disparity in run production is still significant. The Phillies posted a .340 wOBA as a team, good for fifth best in baseball. That translates to +62 runs above average as a team, the best mark of any club in the National League. They are a good group of hitters.

The Yankees posted a .366 wOBA, which translates into a staggering +198 runs above average. The Red Sox were the only team within 100 runs of the Yankees in wRAA, checking in at +122. New York was 110 runs ahead of the third best offense in baseball, by linear weights. The 26 point gap between the Yankees and Phillies in wOBA is essentially equal to the gap between the Phillies and the Astros.

The disparity won’t be quite that dramatic in the head to head match-up due to the same rules being applied to both teams in regards to the DH, but that just diminishes the difference from ridiculous to huge. As good as the Phillies lineup is, the Yankees are just better.

Philly will have to make up that gap with their run prevention, but that’s easier said than done. The biggest flaw on the Yankee team is the back end of their rotation, which is the part of the roster most marginalized in a playoff series. The Yankees managed to hand 83 percent of their ALCS innings to CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera, while leaving just 17 percent for everyone else. They probably won’t be able to repeat that mark in the World Series, but Philadelphia hitters should still expect to see that quartet 75 percent of the time.

The one real area where the Phillies have a distinct advantage is on defense. Their defenders will bail their pitchers out of jams, while Yankee hurlers are left to do that on their own. But that alone won’t be enough to overcome the advantages New York has – the Phillies are just going to have to get some guys to play over their heads.

In a short series, anything can happen. Even with the talent advantage on the Yankee side of things, the Phillies still have something like a 40 percent chance to win the series. But as much as I’m hoping for a classic series with seven close games, there remains a distinct possibility that the Yankees could just blow the Phillies out of the water. They’re that good.

The 2008 World Champions are back in the World Series in ’09, but the club faces a huge challenge in the form of the New York Yankees, a club that boasts the largest payroll in Major League Baseball. Both clubs, though, have paid a hefty price for their success and both clubs have benefited from the free agent and trade markets.

In fact, neither Game 1 starter was with their respective teams one year ago. Philadelphia’s Cliff Lee was playing with Cleveland, while C.C. Sabathia signed with New York prior to the ’09 season as a free agent. He began ’08 with The Tribe, but was later traded to the Milwaukee Brewers. The two hurlers were teammates for six-and-a-half seasons, so you can bet each pitcher has given extensive scouting reports to their respective offense.

Both aces have been dominating throughout the season and in the post season:

Regular Season
Sabathia: 3.39 FIP, 7.71 K/9, .233 AVG, 6.0 WAR
Cliff Lee: 3.11 FIP, 7.03 K/9, .273 AVG, 6.6 WAR

Post Season
Sabathia: 2.44 FIP, 7.94 K/9, .210 AVG, 0.79 WPA
Cliff Lee: 1.82 FIP, 7.40 K/9, .169 AVG, 0.86 WPA

Sabathia has dominated opponents with a very good fastball-changeup combination, while mixing in some average sliders. Lee, on the other hand, relies heavily on a good fastball, while mixing an assortment of average pitches and maintaining excellent control. Who has the edge? My gut says New York, mainly because the hitters have, on average, seen a lot more of Lee than Philly has seen of Sabathia.

New York has yet to announce who will pitch in Games Two and Three, but Philly will follow Lee with veteran Pedro Martinez — who has seen a lot of the Yankees during his time in Boston — and the disappointing Cole Hamels. The Phillies club has also activated pitcher Brett Myers for the World Series. The free-agent-to-be was on the NLCS roster, but he was removed for the NLDS. Utility player Miguel Cairo was deleted from the active roster.

Through the nine-game post-season, the hottest hitters for the Phillies have been:
Shane Victorino (.361/.439/.722)
Jayson Werth (.281/.395/.813)
Ryan Howard (.355/.462/.742)
Carlos Ruiz (.346/.500/.500).

The biggest disappointments have been:
Jimmy Rollins (.244/.279/.317)
Pedro Feliz (.161/.212/.355).

In order to repeat as World Champions, Philadelphia will have to get to the Yankees’ top starters, including Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte. In the bullpen, both Mariano Rivera (eight appearances) and Joba Chamberlain (seven) have been overworked in the nine-game post-season. As well, outside of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, the offense has been inconsistent. But as any American League fan can tell you, New York’s offense is always one at-bat away from exploding.

Andre Ethier has been a keystone in the Los Angeles Dodgers lineup during their playoff runs over the last two years. He has been an above average hitter since reaching the major leagues in 2006, but in 2008 he took a major step forward, becoming a legitimate offensive star. His 53.3 wRAA since 2008 ranks 24th in the major leagues.

Over the last two seasons, there are 10 players within 6 wRAA of Ethier’s 53.3. Of these players, the average WAR is 8.4, or 4.2 per season. Evan Longoria leads this impressive pack of players at 12.6 wins, having contributed 37.7 runs of defensive value.

At the bottom of the list is our subject, Andre Ethier. As he plays the corner outfield positions, he already starts out with a position adjustment of -13.9 runs. Combine that with a -21.7 UZR over 308 games in the outfield, and Ethier has cost the Dodgers 35.6 runs with the glove.

Ethier’s first two seasons suggested some defensive talent. Over his first 271 games (212 starts), Ethier compiled a +6.5 UZR in the outfield. Of course, this is not the only example of a UZR sample of this size showing a significant deviation from the following two seasons. However, we can ask: what changed?

First of all, let’s look at the biggest component of the statistic: range. Ethier showed fantastic range in 2007 after showing average range in 2006. His range fell off a cliff then in 2008 and 2009, at -6.6 and -6.9 runs, respectively.

Similarly, Ethier’s arm looked fantastic in 2006, at 6.8 runs in merely 92 DG (defensive games adjusted for attempts). He has not shown that skill since, and his arm dipped below -5 runs above average this season. It is possible that his arm was better suited to left field – his ARM in 154 DG is +4.1 in LF vs. -6.9 in 371 DG in RF.

It appears that we have two major outliers skewing his results from 2006 and 2007. Ethier’s +6.8 ARM rating may have been a product of both his time in left field as well as random variation in the statistic. Since his move to playing primarily right field in 2007, his arm has rated as nearly 10 runs below average, the ninth worst overall mark over the past three years.

The other outlier is Ethier’s +5.2 range score in 2007. Ethier has never showed the skills of a fast player. He’s been caught stealing (16 times) nearly as many times as he’s stolen a base (17). His 32 infield hits since 2007 is nearly average among qualified players, and he’s only attempted one bunt since 2007 and didn’t get a hit on. As mentioned above, Ethier’s range score in 2008 and 2009 was a combined 13.5 runs below average, a far cry from his excellent 2007 mark.

Ethier now has a sample of 371 DG in RF and 525 total OF DG. That’s a sample of roughly 3.5 total seasons and roughly 2.5 RF seasons. A better guess than looking at last year’s -15 season is to look at his career as a whole. Ethier now has a -4.4 UZR/150 for his career, but a -6.8 UZR/150 in RF. The Fan’s Scouting Report rates Ethier as a roughly average fielder. Given these two sources of data, we can conclude that Ethier is probably a below average fielder, but probably not as bad as 2009 would suggest. A conservative projection would probably call Ethier a -3 to -5 run fielder in RF going forward.

This is not to say that Ethier has not been a valuable player for the Dodgers. His 7.6 WAR since 2007 place him in the top 100 position players in the league. With 30 teams, players of Ethier’s talent level are difficult to find and are an asset for any team.

Last season, the Rays signed Gabe Kapler to platoon with Gabe Gross in right field. Yesterday the Rays re-signed the righty bopper to partake in a similar role, this time likely with Matt Joyce. The details of the contract are pretty minor; it’s a one-year $1.05M deal, which represents a slight raise over Kapler’s salary of $1,000,018 last year.

The Rays are a glutton for outfielders. Carl Crawford and B.J. Upton are two of the best defenders in baseball, Gabe Gross and Fernando Perez are serviceable, and there’s always Joyce and the highly touted Desmond Jennings to join the fray sometime next year as well, so re-signing Kapler may raise some eyebrows. He’s older and more susceptible to false praise about how hard he runs or devoted he is to working out. Still, Kapler holds some quantifiable attributes that should help the 2010 version of the Rays out.

For one, he hammers left-handed pitching. Over his last three seasons against southpaws – seasons, instead of years, since Kapler was busy managing in the minor leagues in 2007 – Kapler has maintained OPSs of .931 (145 AB), 1.001 (82 AB), and .749 (68 AB). Kapler is less effective against righties, but Joe Maddon used him efficiently last season and there’s no reason to believe Maddon will suddenly become liberal in his substitution patterns based on platoon splits. Kapler should get around 200 plate appearances with at least 75% coming with a platoon advantage. He should also have a higher OPS against right-handers next than .357 (aided by a BABIP near .200).

Kapler is better than pedestrian as a defender, too. The raw UZR numbers account only for the playing time he receives, so the last three seasons (from most recent to oldest: 6.2, 3.2, and 1.5) aren’t entirely telling of his talent level. His UZR/150s during that same time period are 9.7, 11.4, and 6.1; that makes him an above average defender and one capable of manning the occasional post in center if needed.

Watching Kapler is entirely captivating yet, at times, maddening. He plays the outfield and runs the bases like a spider on LSD – which is to say he appears to have eight legs and lacks basic control of each – and he looks like your typical jockhead with big muscles, a shaved head, eye black, the occasional pair of high socks. Then you listen to him talk and he comes off articulate and personable. Jonah Keri swore by this after spending some time talking to him last spring training, and I was in disbelief until hearing him in a post-game interview.

Quite a bit has been made locally about the Rays ignoring clubhouse chemistry and all that jazz, yet if the Rays win this season or in 2010, I guarantee Kapler would be praised as one of the glue guys. There’s enough grit and hustle to captivate the casual fan, yet still a pinch of underrated charm to endear the more sophisticated crowd.

Given the low cost and likely production of Kapler, this has the looking of an easy win on the Rays end.

The last time Pedro Martinez faced the New York Yankees in the post-season came back during the 2004 American League Championship Series. Some may recall that series because (a) it launched a million annoying Red Sox fans and (b) Pedro appeared in game seven as a reliever, pitching an inning and giving up a few runs. Five years later, many things have changed. The Yankees’ trophy cases are empty since – Boston’s case is not – and Pedro has only appeared in one playoff game since leaving soon after.

Needless to say, the old rivals will have some catching up to do prior to Pedro’s first start – whether that comes in Game Two or Three is anyone’s guess at the moment. The Yankees side of things seems to be well-covered, so let’s focus on Pedro and what he works with nowadays.

Fastball

No longer the ethereal and (at times) deadly projectile of times past, Pedro can still get over 90 MPH, just not with any sense of regularity. That doesn’t stop him from using the pitch nearly 60% of the time. The lack of top-end velocity hasn’t stopped batters from swinging and missing 9.3% of the time either. Left-handed batters, of which the Yankees have a few, still went contact-less about 9% of the time. Pedro’s fastballs still flash some decent movement too, just at a reduced pace.

Change-up

The Isis to the fastball’s Osiris, Pedro’s change is quite the miss. Despite a whiff rate of 18%, it does have a negative run value; however, the figure could be a benefactor of shoddy luck rather than a staple of ineffectiveness because of defensive dependence. The Phillies were one of the three best defensive teams in the National League as told by UZR and their pitchers combined for a .304 regular season BABIP (for reference: Pedro’s regular season BABIP was .315). Looking for the actual hit data against the change-up to corroborate the ‘it’s just luck’ assortment serves no help to Pedro. The pitch was put into play on 41 occasions and 25 turned into outs. That’s a .390 BABIP on 46% groundballs and a wee bit misfortunate. The question becomes whether a pitch can generate that many whiffs and yet still be extremely hittable. Maybe it was location or good guessing by the hitters or maybe it’s just small sample sizes magnifying everything.

Breaking pitches

Pedro’s curveball gets the second most whiffs of his pitches. There’s some debate as to whether he throws a slider or cutter. The pitch goes in the low-80s, so I would call it a slider. It doesn’t induce many empty swings, no matter what you call it.

Gary Matthews Jr is not a good baseball player. He’s also completely unaware of this. Here’s a quote from the LA Times:

“I don’t expect to be back; it’s time to move on,” outfielder Gary Matthews Jr. said as he packed his belongings in the team’s Angel Stadium clubhouse today. “I’m ready to play for an organization that wants me to play every day. This organization has other plans, and that’s OK.”

And about that contract of his?

“It’s definitely not as big as it was a year ago,” Matthews said. “Obviously, there are some teams that can’t afford it, but when I’m playing every day, I feel I can be a top-line center fielder, and that, I would think, is what a lot of teams want.”

.

Well, he is right about one thing – his contract is not as large as it was a year ago. It’s still a boat anchor of a deal for a player who has basically no chance of ever starting for another major league team again. Over the first three seasons of his contract with Anaheim, Matthews has been worth -$5.3 million in salary. That minus sign is not a typo. Given his performance relative to the value that could have been found by playing any random Triple-A guy instead, Matthews owes the Angels $5.3 million for taking wins off the board. Even without the contract, he’d have a hard time convincing anyone to employ him in 2010 after two straight seasons of below replacement level production.

The contract makes it impossible for the Angels to trade him, so in the end, they’ll just end up releasing him, at which point Mr. Matthews may be shocked to learn that other teams do not share his optimism about his ability to still be a top-line center fielder. He’s 35 years old and hasn’t shown any ability to hit or field since 2006. The market for aging veterans has collapsed the last few years, as useful players such as Kenny Lofton, Ray Durham, and Frank Thomas have been forced into early retirement against their wishes. Teams simply aren’t willing to use roster spots on players that they feel will create problems in reserve roles, choosing instead to give opportunities to hungry twenty somethings who will work their tails off to live the dream.

Over the last three years, Matthews has proven that he’s not worthy of a starting job and not willing to accept a reserve role, so in the end, he’s probably going to find himself with a new job entirely – one that has nothing to do with playing major league baseball. Sorry, Gary, but you probably just talked yourself right out of the game.

Prospect ranking season is just around the corner. In anticipation of that, we present an intro series looking at some of the players who deserve mentioning but probably will not be appearing on their teams’ Top 10 lists. The popular series is back for a second year.

The Graduate: Felipe Paulino, RHP
Paulino is a perfect example that velocity is not everything. Despite having a heater that averaged out at 95.4 mph in ’09, the right-hander’s fastball value was just -2.36 wFB/C. His curveball and changeup (both of which were used infrequently) were also ineffective. His slider was a quality pitch, but it was easy for MLB hitters to lay off of it because nothing else was working for him. As a result, Paulino was hit hard: 1.84 HR/9 rate and 126 hits allowed in 97.2 innings. He’ll need to improve his repertoire if he’s going to have success in ’10.

The Riser: T.J. Steele, OF
An excellent athlete, there were serious questions about Steele’s hitting ability when he sign out of the University of Arizona in ’08. Lancaster can do wonderful things for an offensive prospect. In 194 high-A at-bats, the outfielder hit .345/.385/.562 in 194 at-bats before injuries wiped out his season. Impressively, Steele trimmed his strikeout rate from 32.1 to 20.6%. Despite getting caught six times in 14 attempts, he has plus speed, and the .216 ISO makes for a dangerous combination (unless that was strictly a result of playing in high-A Lancaster).

The Tumbler: Brad James, RHP
James is one of the more perplexing players in the system. The right-hander has a solid sinker/slider combo, but his sinker has lost effectiveness over the past two seasons. In ’09, James struggled mightily although he still posted a ground-ball rate of 54% and limited line-drives to just 13%. He had trouble finding the plate in ’09 with a walk rate of 5.18%. His strikeout rate of 4.60 K/9 did inspire much hope either.

The ’10 Sleeper: Leandro Cespedes, RHP
On first blush, the 22-year-old right-hander’s numbers do not look overly special. But Cespedes was pitching in Lancaster, which usually destroys young hurlers. His ERA of 5.06 is not terrible for the league but, more importantly, his FIP was just 3.95. He posted a reasonable 3.55 BB/9, but the 28 wild pitches are worrisome. His strikeout rate dropped from 9.48 in ’08 to 7.93 K/9 in ’09. Cespedes survived Lancaster despite a 38.7% ground-ball rate. He has a fastball that touches the low-90s, as well as a splitter and slider.

Bonus: Koby Clemens, C
Clemens was highlighted in the ’08 series as the Astros’ sleeper prospect for ’09 and he made us look smart (playing in Lancaster did not hurt). His ISO jumped from .155 in ’08 to .291 in ’09 and he posted a 1.055 OPS. Clemens also led the minor leagues with 121 RBI. The former third baseman still remains raw behind the plate and he also saw time in left field at Lancaster. Clemens allowed 18 passed balls and threw out just 20% of base stealers. If he keeps hitting like he did in ’09 (which is unlikely), it won’t matter where he ends up in the field.

One interesting match-up in the upcoming World Series is all of the great left handed Phillies hitters against a Yankees’ rotation that features two solid left handed pitchers, CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte. The Phillies will face a lefty starter in at least half of the World Series games no matter if the Yankees go with a three or four man rotation or how many games the series goes.

The biggest issue for the Phillies is Ryan Howard, who is a very bad hitter against LHPs.

On the splits page, you can see that the biggest difference is in his ISO and K rate. On the other hand, in recent years, the difference in his walk rate against LHP and RHP has decreased. Looking at a pitch-by-pitch basis he takes more called strikes against LHPs than RHPs (13% of pitches versus 11% of pitches). His whiff rate increases from 28% against RHPs to 38% (Mark Reynolds territory) against LHPs. Here is how his whiff rate varies by horizontal pitch location:

Interestingly, he whiffs less on inside pitches from LHPs than RHPs. Next, let’s check out his slugging on balls in play:

Here you see a big difference. Against RHPs he maintains high power across most of the plate (it peaks in the middle of the plate, not surprisingly). But against LHPs his power is relegated to the middle-away, and it falls off sharply inside.

Putting the graphs together explains his overall weakness against LHPs. On inside pitches, he doesn’t whiff that often, but has little power. On the outer portion of the plate, he can hit for some power, but he whiffs at a huge rate.

If you project Howard as roughly a .450 wOBA hitter versus RHBs and roughly a .300 wOBA hitter against LHPs that works out to a 0.13 run difference per at-bat. That is over half a run every four at-bats, an enormous difference and significant cause for concern for the Phillies in the games they face Sabathia and Pettitte.

The answer to that question is complicated. There is no easy yes or no answer and that is not so much because there are so many variables we don’t know the answer. It has to do with game theory. Oh, in case you didn’t watch the 6th game of the ALCS or you forgot, in the 8th inning with the Yankees up 3-2, Swisher bunted with a runner on first (and no out of course) and when he reached on an ROE, Melky bunted with runners on first and second.

Many people, including those who are sabermetrically inclined, typically decry the sacrifice bunt – why give away outs? The conventional (and lazy) sabermetric wisdom used to be that sac bunt attempts were almost always incorrect – at least ever since The Hidden Game of Baseball told us so and legions of sabermetric fans and even sabermetricians looked at the RE and WE tables and noticed that the game state after an out and base runner advance was worse than before – hence the sac bunt is wrong.

The problem of course is that that is a ridiculously simplistic way to answer the question on two fronts. One, the WE or RE before and after a “successful” sac bunt, using a standard table, is based on an average batter in an average lineup against an average pitcher and defense in an average stadium on an average Spring day. At least some analysts recognized that in different contexts, those numbers would have to be revised. However, most of them also noted that the gap was so large between the “before” and “after” state (in favor of the “before” state – which assumes hitting away most of the time), that it would take an enormously bad hitter -like a pitcher – to make it correct to bunt. They would basically be right.

Now, there is a more important and pertinent reason why looking at RE and WE charts and comparing the “before” and “after” numbers do not help you in answering the question as to whether a sac bunt (by a non-pitcher) is correct in any given situation. And that is because a sac bunt attempt obviously does not lead to an out and a base runner advance 100% of the time (or even close to 100%); in fact the average result from a sac bunt attempt is not even equivalent to an out and a base runner advance. Also, the average result varies a lot with the speed and bunting skill of the batter and whether and by how much the defense is anticipating the bunt or not (among other things).

Read the rest of this entry »